She Worked in a Harvard Lab to Reverse Aging, Until ICE Jailed Her
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
I'm also wondering how you are supposed to declare something like this. They don't pass out those customs forms on flights from Europe anymore, you just go through immigration and the officer asks whatever questions they feel like. In my case the only question was "did you buy anything".
> Then, as she headed toward the baggage claim, a Border Patrol officer approached her and asked to search her suitcase.
I'm sure there is something she was supposed to do if her lawyer is acknowledging she violated some regulation, I just have no idea what it would be.
If it's done on paper, this is done at the passport check, before you've picked up your checked luggage, and well before picking a customs lane.
I've certainly been randomly chosen for a screening, and when that happened, a customs agent went up to me (deliberately) shortly after I got my luggage. I forget why, but they have flags for suspicious behavior. I think it might have been because I came back with one more bag than I left with, or some intermediate destination.
There are also, in some airports, customs dogs sniffing things between luggage pickup and customs who can also flag for screens.
So none of this sounds too unusual to me, except for the final step: being shipped off to a detention center. I've never brought in anything improper, but I know people who came to the US with illicit food. The outcome was:
1) A rather serious fine
2) Being screened literally every time they passed into the US
The second was more obnoxious. Every time they came into the US for at least the next half-decade, customs would unpack their bags.
> So none of this sounds too unusual to me, except for the final step: being shipped off to a detention center.
It's because her J-1 visa was cancelled. I am not sure if that was warranted or how threatening frog embryos are, so can't judge there. But if the J-1 visa is cancelled, the person usually has to exit the US and re-apply. She didn't necessarily lose her status as a J-1 student, but she may need a new visa. So the procedure here would have been to put her on a plane to Russia. However they asked her if it would be dangerous for her to be there, and it is, so she got sent to a detention center instead.
Requiring one to return home to reapply also never made any sense for student visas, at least when it comes to graduate level research. Academics at state funded institutions who are paid off of government grants aren't generally people you need to worry about sticking around if their visa is denied. Neither is it clear why you would ever want to deny a visa to such a person to begin with.
Agree. However, this kind of visa is not necessarily for highly skilled professionals, it can be for general cultural exchange, even for au pairs. They have to be "sponsored" by someone. As such, it can also be a vehicle to get people in the country and overstay the visa, I know someone who did that. Then, once it's cancelled, the general rule is you can't enter into the country. To a port of entry person a J-1 for a nanny for a rich family is just as good as J-1 for a Harvard researcher. Except the Harvard researcher now did break some rule so is in a much worse position.
> at least when it comes to graduate level research.
Most definitely. There should be someone looking here and saying maybe these should different visa types and the requirement to leave sounds excessive. It shouldn't be the default, I think. Maybe with the most visible cases like these, there is more of a chance to change the rules.
> Neither is it clear why you would ever want to deny a visa to such a person to begin with.
They broke a rule or law and seemingly tried to hide it. At that point I guess it depends on the mood of the person at the port of entry. It shouldn't be like that but it is. There is no general right to have a visa or some way to compel the US government to give you one. A lawyer through a court could make a case here. But in general you can't show up and say "You owe me a J-1 visa" or "you'll un-cancel the previous one".
We've whipsawed so far away from any norms that the majority "normal" people in the center are just left stunned at how we got here. And the ones who voted for this shitshow are fed a constant diet of lies and propaganda to keep them in line - things get bad? Refill the rage canister by rolling out Kristi Noem with some more made-for-insta reels in front of the "bad" people locked up in CECOT.
[0] https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-sidelines-doj-lawyer-aft... [1] https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/24pdf/24a949_lkhn.pdf
They say they do: “Messages on her phone revealed she planned to smuggle the materials through customs without declaring them. She knowingly broke the law and took deliberate steps to evade it.”
> The article left me with a couple questions - is cancelling a visa for not declaring something like frog embryos normal protocol?
A visa like J-1 can be cancelled at the port of entry for a variety of reasons. Doesn't mean she immediately loses her status. With a visa like that you're essentially at the mercy of the State Dept. You can still reply but you have to exit the US. The normal procedure would have been to immediately send her to Russia. The idea is, you go back to your home country and re-apply. But they didn't do that and "let her" stay in detention since Russia is a dangerous place for her.
I'd note that these are the same folks asserting people with no criminal records are convicted criminals.
https://www.npr.org/2025/02/04/nx-s1-5282379/trumps-mass-dep...
"In a press briefing last week, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt was asked how many people arrested had a criminal record. She said, 'All of them, because they illegally broke our nation's laws, and, therefore, they are criminals, as far as this administration goes.' But Carlos came to the U.S. through a legal pathway, although the CBP One app he used was shut down by Trump as soon as he took office."
Oh of course, 100%
However when it comes to visa cancellations, from what I understand one is at the mercy of the port of entry officials. Any re-entry with that kind of a visa can trigger a review and the visa may be cancelled for a variety of reasons, not all criminal or proven criminal. I am not saying that's bad or good, it's just how the system works.
The next step is the person usually has to exit the US and re-apply for a visa. So procedurally she should have been put on a plane to Russia. But knowing what Russia looks like they asked her if she should be threatened there so she ended up in a detention center instead.
Like I mentioned in another comment, this was huge mistake from her employee to 1) send her any where, re-entries with these visas should be minimized, especially these days 2) asked her to bring any embryos or any such things.
Sounds suspiciously like "arrested for resisting arrest". Of course the actual meaning of the question is clearly "other than immigration law itself".
I don't think she was "arrested" to "pay for her crimes" so to speak. As in "ok, she was in jail for 10 days, now she learned her lesson and she gets the J-1 visa uncanceled". It's a bit of a different mechanism - the default action here is to be sent to Russia. She chose to stay here instead, even if it meant being in detention. I may be wrong, but I think she can always say "I am going back to Russia" and they'll let her.
On the other hand, pointing out the lunacy of their actions, their hypocrisy, and malice through satire, parody and straight up bullying is the only way to truly break through the shell they've built around that fragile ego they're carrying around. Just my opinion.
The EU still has both those barriers, that many of their countries guard their work permits more fiercely than their own balls, and their wages are lower than places like Dubai with far easier to get work visa. If the EU isn't careful their cake will be stolen by authoritarian places like Singapore and Dubai that have comparatively free trade and easy work permits.
Imagine that H-1Bs would be available in unlimited quantities any time of the year, as long as you meet the minimum requirements. And that the H-1B would be extended to a green card after a few years, assuming the authorities don't find anything too bad in the background checks. That's how it works in the EU.
European countries are generally more protectionist about working class jobs than professional jobs. If you have the education, skills, and experience, they assume that your presence would be good for the economy. And the citizens don't really complain. I guess a major reason is that the primary identities are national, while legal rights are EU-wide. If there are already hundreds of millions of foreigners who could apply for the same jobs, who cares about a small number of additional immigrants.
Yet somehow I've met barbers, janitors and vagrants who brag about tossing their passports on the way to the EU, while my Vietnamese neighbors (a practicing doctor couple in Vietnam), or American and Australian friends, found it extremely difficult to maintain their residency through legal routes, due to some non-issue. Some of them actually went to Dubai and Singapore, while the doctors ended up practicing in Switzerland instead.
I'm not saying that work-based immigration to the EU is easy. I'm only saying that the obstacles are not nearly as bad as in the US.
b.) Yes, it's insanely difficult, that's why the government should be making it EASIER for them to migrate, not flood with more paperwork. For instance, the UAE and Qatar have a Golden Visa programme that, upon verification of credentials by a govt-authorized background check company , grants a 10 year visa to doctors, high earners and uniquely skilled talents. Even nurses and pharmacists benefit from the programme and get the visa easily. The govt takes the effort to conduct the background check, instead of making them try to find employment first before coming to the country.
c.) My anecdotes were about clear and blatant, no regrets immigration FRAUD.
Big fuck up on her boss here. You don't send your immigrant workers on a visa (especially from countries currently involved in a war) to be mules for you, since their visas can always be cancelled for any reason, so why are you putting them in situations where they can give authorities a reason?
How do they not know this? What were they thinking? Either go yourself or send someone else who's a citizen. The lack of thought in this just boggles my mind.
Also, where's the self preservation on her part, especially given her via situation and the situation in her country? When I as an immigrant traveled for work with hardware prototypes , I always made sure my boss had them in his luggage since he's a citizen with a more powerful passport and I don't want to be flagged by border controls on what's a foreigner doing with strange hardware in his luggage.
You don't just accept to be a mule for your employer when you're an immigrant on a visa since then you're just playing Russian roulette(pun not intended). If I were a Russian citizen on a visa abroad right now, I'd do everything in my power to lay low, fly under the radar and avoid all unnecessary travel, or travel with only pajamas and a toothbrush, not with animal embryos. I guess biology scientists are so used to travelling with weird shit all the time, they just forget to declare it.
Edit: @downvoters, do you have any arguments to add?
The current make up of the executive, congress, the senate, and the judiciary.
I don’t see them in the street protesting for universal healthcare until it happens.
The public is nihilistic until their jobs are threatened, even then a single weekend warrior protest and back to the office. The sort of indifference for others until the issue hits home is endemic in America; see Republicans who hate gays until a niece or nephew comes out the closet. Sad, sad, people
Politicians come from American communities, families, schools… it’s a shame so many live with the stress of the cognitive dissonance of their lack of effort and their projection of empty platitudes and memes about themselves
I 100% agree with this, this is what the majority asked for (and probably still want, hatred seems to run deeper than self-interest).
It was illegal not declaring she was carrying embryos. Wasn't that clear from the article?
> Then, as she headed toward the baggage claim, a Border Patrol officer approached her and asked to search her suitcase. All she could think was that the embryo samples inside would be ruined; RNA degrades easily. She explained that she didn’t know the rules. The officer was polite, she recalled, and told her she would be allowed to leave.
I can't speak for Boston, but every American airport I've traveled through internationally has had you pick up bags at the baggage claim, then take it to customs. (After all, a bag search may be involved; you can't really declare something in your bag if you don't have your bag.) This timeline of events seems odd.
Immigration (can you enter) --> international baggage claim --> customs (can your stuff enter) --> transfer bag drop.
edit: Same setup for Boston, it seems?
https://www.jal.co.jp/jp/en/inter/airport/bos/info/
Immigration: "Customs declaration form - not required"
Then baggage claim, then...
Customs: "Please show your passport and customs declaration form. (Your customs declaration form will be collected here.) If you have any items to declare, please declare them to an official."
Not that you can reach that point without stating your declarations on the record. I think it was one of the kiosk stages.
He's even quoted as admitting as much in the article:
>No one at Harvard feels worse than Dr. Peshkin. Again and again, he has asked himself why he allowed Ms. Petrova to take the risk of carrying the samples. He rereads the text exchange he had with Ms. Petrova while she was sitting on the plane.
Also Dr. Peshkin didn't send her, she was already there for vacation:
>Dr. Peshkin worried she would burn out. He was relieved when she told him she was taking a vacation to France, where the pianist Andras Schiff was giving a concert. She bought theater tickets and planned trips to see friends from Moscow, now scattered across Europe.
>“I said, ‘Well, you’re there,’” Dr. Peshkin said. “Why don’t you get this package?”
So not only is this lack of empathy it's also mischaracterizing the situation.
If you're a fisherman on a lake and a fish just jumps in your boat, is it your fault or the fish's fault? You were just doing your fisherman job.
You(individually) can't change the bad policies of the country you emigrated to because you're not a citizen with voting rights, right? But you can adapt your behavior to not fall in the trap of those bad policies, right?
All you have to do is lay low and not break any laws or do things that attract attention of the authorities, like you know, travelling with undeclared embryos, which is not something average travelers usually do.
"Yeah but your country's laws are stupid, so give me a break" is not a defense that ever works for immigrants, which means they're at the mercy of trigger happy border enforcement agents who are just following the law, which says they can deport anyone for any reason they see fit.
I think many western people with powerful passports don't realize, that when you're a guest in a country (especially with a weak passport) you really need to be a lot more paranoid than the locals on the rules and regulations of the host country since you'll have no local rights and no embassy to bail you out if you fuck up. The speed limit says 100? Well, you drive at 90 just to be sure. Yeah, it sucks, but that's life.
Like HN users probably would broadly agree that advising people to "just don't act shady" doesn't make the PATRIOT act okay. Nor is it particularly helpful because both the scope of what can be considered suspicious or unlawful is well beyond what a normal person can be expected to considered their actions. The average person commits 3 felonies a day, the enforcement of which is essentially discretionary and means that anyone can be made subject to arbitrary punitive measures.
Certainly there's a frustration with how impotent one can feel about the law and politics, I don't disagree that we should try to control what we can and avoid putting ourselves into compromising situations. But that said I don't think criticizing the victims of injustice helps anyone or is ever the right thing to do.
Of course I think people should get second chances, especially naive students. The professor should also have been mindful of this risk and made sure she complied with the rules too.
I see my message hasn't gotten through, so I will repeat it one last time.
You can't change the policy on the spot just because you think it's bad. Therefore as a traveler you must adapt to the policy of the destination country, even if you think it's bad, not the other way around. That's how it works in every democratic country. Go to Germany or anywhere else and start braking laws that you think are bad (and there are plenty of those) and see where that gets you. A friend of mine got 3 fines on his business trip to Germany he swore he's never setting foot there again.
If you dislike the policies of a foreign country, just don't go there, simple. Don't emigrate to a country and then complain about them throwing the book at you when you break a law, because as a non-citizen, nobody will care about your situation. Sad but true.
Yeah as an immigrant this sucks, but this is how the world works everywhere. Until you become a naturalized citizen, you have to adapt to the host country's stupid laws to the T as you're always more vulnerable than the citizens.
They are not force of nature and it is 100% reasonable to blame them and only them.
More likely what you suggest is necessary but not sufficient. The Administration claimed that all of the people sent to the El Salvador prison were violent criminals. In fact, 90% were no such thing. I think you are overestimating the degree to which the rule of law - due process in particular- is now operative in the United States.
Not a downvoter, but the idea of proportionality is core to liberal democracies. It’s why only illiberal states would cut off the hands of a petty thief, or execute drug offenders, and so forth. Wrecking a person’s life over frog embryos, irrespective of her imprudence or her boss’s carelessness is a disproportionate response. That’s my argument. It smacks of the sort of arbitrary cruelty and pettiness that runs through the very core of this administration.
Sure, but when border agents are legally allowed to act as judges, juries and executioners on the spot, why is it surprising this happens?
They see hundreds or thousands of plane travelers pass by them per day maybe, they don't have time to assess each individual case by case. They're legally allowed to cut before measuring when they encounter someone who broke a law. They don't care that person didn't know the law.
This has nothing to do with the orange man, but with the powers border agents have at their discursion which inevitably results in both false positives and false negatives on a daily basis.
While you need at least 500 karma points to see the downvote mechanism, apparently its been possible to downvote using curl or other software after attaching certain nonces without any kind of verification that the account meets that requirement.
A guy interested in this was tinkering and found that out in another post. Not sure if the guy ended up reaching out to dang or not.
I didn't go about verifying it, but the post he tinkered in definitely was downvoted by several points and the account used had only single digit karma (almost brand new).
As for what happened, its pretty clear that the boss follows the academic and government stereotype of the corrupt magistrate. Leveraging someone who can't say no for fear of reprisal (and she immigrated from such an environment so its fresh).
In any case, this is just an example of how totalitarian our society has become, and how it has followed the predictable indicators similar to that which lead up to Hitler's rise to power.
There has been a running debate that when communism fails to subvert and seize power, totalitarianism rises in response. A lot of historian's have been working hard lately.
Wonder what the wording is. If it is more like "-I am brining the embryos", "-ok" it will be hard to prove it. Or if it's more like "It's illegal, don't declare them, look at the customs people smile but don't smile or stare too much". They still managed to ruin her life of course over it.
And I agree with another downvoted poster currently that this was a fuckup on her boss. It's not like he didn't know the current environment. If you hold a J-1 or F-1 visa you don't want to be traveling and crossing any US borders if you can avoid it. It wasn't safe years ago, and it's even more unsafe now. Just going to France to see a performance doesn't seem like an appropriate risk. Doing anything illegal at all, and you're now in jeopardy. You're essentially at the mercy of the State Dept to revoke your visa at any time. If you have lawyers you can fix it in court, but I that is a major uphill battle.